Super User

Friday, 08 January 2021 15:25

EOSterm - Earth Observation Systems Thesaurus

The project was started aiming at developing a controlled and structured terminology system related to GIS and remote sensing. The first phase corresponded to the identification of potential sources of terminology, the selection of proper terms, their extraction and the creation of a terminology database.

The sources used to collect the terminology consist of:
    • GIS Dictionary of Association of Geographic Information - AGI
    • CCRS Remote Sensing Glossary of Canada Centre
    • ATIS Telecom glossary 2000

Other sources have been considered:
    • Glossary of Cartographic Terms of Texas University
    • Dictionary of Abbreviations and Acronyms in GIS, Cartography and Remote Sensing of the University of California
    • Glossary of Oceanography, Climatology and the Related Geosciences
    • GIS Glossary of Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI)
    • Glossary of GIS and Metadata terms of Environmental On-Line Services (ERIN)

The terminology was analysed with respect to the degree of semantic relevance in the field of remote sensing and GIS. The terms too generic or that have been considered as non-pertinent were excluded. Groups of terms that could be collected in specific appendixes -for example, terms related to international organisation or institution- were also excluded. Finally, the terms that have been considered as more specifics about GIS, as well as those more details for Remote Sensing, were identified and marked.
Terms have been classified according to the EARTh upper structure. The semantic classification foresees the allocation of each term in a relation tree starting from the more general concept represented by the category. The result is an English-Italian terminology system containing about 3.000 terms.

Published in Thesauri

Tagged under

Friday, 08 January 2021 09:07

Introduction

Thesauri are controlled and dynamic vocabularies of terms, where semantic relations (hierarchical, associative, equivalence) between terms are explicitly declared. They are instruments for the semantic control of the language and can be used for indexing, classification, metadatation, cataloguing and retrieval of information in databases.
Thesauri can adopt different classification structures based on general categories and facets, on a thematic or disciplinary base, or following a mixed approach. To represent the semantics of a term it is necessary to choose which types of characteristics and how many of them need to be considered and included in the representation. While there is the necessity to share a common and stable meaning of the terms to guarantee communication within a community, openness to further exploration of meaning should also be ensured so as not to impoverish its richness and complexity. Highly structured and refined, but flexible tools are needed to deal with issues such as information management on the web or to satisfy the growing demand of semantic interoperability. The goal is the development of a thesaurus that could include the above assumptions aiming to become an advanced tool to be applied in environmental information management. To sustain environmental policy and research, not only access to- but also a high-level quality of information is required. There is the constant need to follow the terminological changes in science and technology (new terms and/or new meanings, new topics and issues). Starting from this premise, we adopted a more inclusive approach concerning both conceptual coverage and semantic organisation, and taking also into consideration suggestions arising from the development of applied ontologies, we started to work on thesaurus format containing some innovative elements. Copyright for the CNR-ISP Vocabularies structure and content in English and Italian is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Unported License.

Classification structure

CNR-ISP thesauri are based on a multidimensional classificatory and semantic model. The vertical structure of the Thesaurus is the fundamental constituent of such a model. This structure is mono-hierarchical. It has been developed according to a tree semantic model and is founded on a system of categories. It is organised in a framework composed of different levels and classification knots and comprises hierarchical relationships. The first two levels of the classification correspond to the system of categories. The first level includes Entities, Attributes, Dynamic aspects and Dimensions. Entities constitutes “things”. Attributes defines the character of “things”, at least in their static aspects. Dynamic aspects relates to transformations and operations connected to “things”. Dimensions identifies the spatio-temporal circumstances where all this is manifested. In the subsequent level of the classification, the super-category Entities is divided into Material entities and Immaterial entities. Attributes includes three different categories: Properties; Structure and Morphology; Composition. Dynamic aspects comprehends: Processes; Conditions; Activities. Dimensions refers to Space and Time. According to this model, the semantics of the terms is described by the categories where they are located. Following a bottom-up perspective, terms could be analysed according to a progressive hierarchical scale. In that scale, conceptual features are progressively decreased following an intensional perspective, while in an extensional perspective (the set of objects that that term denotes), the number of things associated to that intension is increased. The maximum level of generality is thus reached. Categories represent the top of this vertical structure that analyses the meaning of the terms according to a logical perspective. It can be considered as an operative tool that – by providing the categorial interpretation of the meaning of the terms and by placing them in the classificatory-hierarchical tree – aims to orientate the users towards the most essential characteristics of their semantics.

Relational structure

The usefulness of a well-structured domain-specific thesaurus for the management of information is rather acknowledged. However, there is a widespread opinion that the traditional thesaurus format doesn’t completely fit the current needs. One of the main problems posed by thesauri seems to be the fact that they provide a poorly differentiated set of relationships between terms, distinguishing only among hierarchical relationships, associative relationships and equivalence relationships. In our thesauri, a more refined set of semantic relationships is being implemented. Standard relationships are enriched by attributes, whose semantic content is specified. The augmentation of thesaurus relationships will ensure a stronger semantic control, also because different relationships can hold each other in check, and open up new possibilities for information retrieval applications. The enrichment of the relations and their increased semantic clarification could enable, for example, a better semantic description of Web resources and guide a user in meaningful information discovery on the Web. Besides, it will increase the possibility of using them also for artificial intelligence applications.

Hierarchical structure

Thesaurus standards and the scientific literature include three kinds of hierarchical relations: generic, partitive and instance, which are conflated into one generic hierarchical relationship. Perhaps this is the most misused relation. Many existing thesauri, claiming to be ISO standard consistent, provide relations that are labelled as BT/NT but they could be better interpreted as associative relations. They are, in fact, based on a document-retrieval definition of broader-narrower that is of pragmatic nature and oriented towards the function of the search process. In EARTh only hierarchies that are logically based will be included. Moreover, we will differentiate the different types of relations and as a second step subtypes will be identified.
Associative relation is quite difficult to describe because it covers a heterogeneous and undifferentiated set of relations. ISO 704 defines it as a relation that exists when a thematic connection can be established between concepts by virtue of experience. It can express many kinds of association between terms that are not hierarchically based. Such links should be made explicit in a thesaurus since they suggest additional terms that can be used in indexing or retrieval. In our thesauri, we are trying to specify the nature of the relations and to differentiate RTs in subtypes (i.e., cause/effect, raw material/product, discipline/practitioner, etc.). In this way, by strengthening the transversal relational structure, which is based on associative relations, a knowledge representation model that is net-like structured is being developed. It will emphasize the system of interrelations, the connecting ties that limit the degree of separation of a conceptual field and cannot be represented by the taxonomic-hierarchic tree-like model. In our case, this is very important also to obtain a system able to deal with the environment, which is a domain where the complexity of the systems as well as the web of interlinking, plays a key role.
Equivalence relationship covers at least the following basic types: synonyms, lexical variants and near-synonymy. Synonymy refers to meaning similarity. It has also been defined as interchangeability between terms, although it is very difficult to think about the existence of an absolute or perfect synonymy. Classes of synonyms include, for example, dialectal variants, popular and technical term pairs, generic and trade name pairs, different linguistic origin variants, variant names for emergent concepts, slang or jargon synonyms etc. Lexical variants are different word forms for the same expression and derive from morphological and grammatical variations (i.e., orthographic and syntactic variants). For synonyms as well as for lexical variants we will try to identify different subtypes. The category of near-synonyms as such isn’t included at this stage in the system.

Thematic structure

In EARTh a thematic organisation of terms has been elaborated. A theme or a subject is here conceived as a sector of interest that reassembles the terms related to it, while a tree or faceted structure tends to scatter them under their referral logical category. We have developed a thematic classification that has been utilised to classify the terms and that could also be used for the management of information in the field of research, environmental policy, dissemination to users. From a semiotic point of view, this model should allow meaning representation according to different second-order perspectives and acceptations. The possibility to apply additional classification models would ensure, in fact, openness and flexibility to the model. The RT relation can, of course, help in expressing additional semantic traits.

Published in Thesauri

Tagged under

Wednesday, 23 December 2020 08:09

Special Issue: Low Temperature Microbiology Meets the Global Challenges of Our Time (deadline 15 December 2022)

A special issue of Microorganisms (ISSN 2076-2607). This special issue belongs to the section "Environmental Microbiology".

This Special Issue aims to compile scientific contributions on low temperature microbiology with a focus on current and future global challenges. Original research, review, and perspective papers addressing the following topic areas will be considered: Environmental change: e.g., the taxonomic and functional diversity of microbial communities in polar and alpine regions, biodiversity loss, biotic and abiotic interactions, biological processes and biogeochemical cycles, greenhouse gas production, ice-albedo, etc.; Long-term microbial preservation in nature: e.g., microbial ancient DNA (aDNA), viability and metabolic activity of microorganisms in ancient cryo-environments, old pathogens in melting glaciers and permafrost, etc.; Sustainable bioproducts and bioprocesses: e.g., omics-based approaches to the discovery of functional molecules, expression systems and fermentation strategies, cryo-enzymes, antimicrobials, biosurfactants and other cold-active biomolecules of biotechnological potential, etc.

Special Issue information - Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 December 2022.
Special Issue Editors: Amedea Perfumo (AWI), Angelina Lo Giudice (CNR-ISP)

Published in Attività Editoriale

Tagged under

Friday, 18 December 2020 09:11

Fellowships

There are no active fellowships

Published in Institute

Tagged under

Friday, 11 December 2020 13:39

SIOS Survey: Assessing impacts of COVID-19 pandemic on Svalbard science community

Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System-Knowledge Centre (SIOS-KC) and its Remote Sensing Working Group (RSWG) has prepared a survey to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the Svalbard science community, long-term monitoring programmes, and other field activities in Svalbard during 2020. This survey will be used to make a strategy for the upcoming (2021) field season in Svalbard. It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete this survey. The survey will be closed on 7th January 2021.

SIOS Survey

Published in Archivio

Tagged under

Thursday, 10 December 2020 14:16

L'Istituto di Scienze Polari a Maker Faire Rome 2020, 10-13 Dicembre 2020

Dal 10 dicembre ore 10.00 al 13 dicembre ore 22.00

Nell'ambito della manifestazione Maker Faire Rome - The European edition 2020 il CNR-ISP partecipa con il seguente programma:

Published in Archivio eventi ISP

Tagged under

Monday, 23 November 2020 07:37

SPOTLIGHT ON CANADA - WEBINAR: Digitalisation of the Energy Sector | 2 December 2020

Webinar, organizzato in collaborazione con ENLIT Europe, “Spotlight on Canada: the Digitalisation of the energy sector” in programma il 2 dicembre 2020 alle ore 16:00 CET.

Registrazione basta al seguente link:

CANADA EVENT REGISTRATION.

Published in Archivio Eventi

Tagged under

Friday, 20 November 2020 11:39

SIOS Webinar - Marine science in Svalbard - global to local perspective

Webinar#6: 27 November 2020, 10:00 - 11:30 (CET)

Registration and PROGRAMME

Published in Archivio Eventi

Tagged under

Friday, 20 November 2020 09:17

ISP a FUTURO REMOTO 2020 - 23 Novembre

Fa troppo caldo per il ghiaccio - 23 novembre ore 9.00 - 10.00, per scuole e università, con Renato Colucci, ricercatore ISP

L'attuale fase climatica di riscaldamento, evidente su gran parte della superficie terrestre e con temperature che mediamente, a livello globale, si sono già alzate di poco più di 1°C, vede le zone montane e polari quelle più vulnerabili e sensibili all'aumento della temperatura. Sono queste le aree dove si trovano i ghiacciai che, di conseguenza, si stanno ritirando a ritmo sempre più accelerato. Quali sono le conseguenze di un mondo con sempre meno ghiaccio?